Egypt Revisited

“Revolution is not a dinner party, not an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly and modestly.”
- Mao Tse-Tung.
None, at this point, would comprehend this better than the people of Egypt!!

From where I left brooding over Egypt's future after the political turmoil in Feb 2011, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces under General Tantawi, not surprisingly,  has entrenched its responsibility as a make-shift solution. Newsweek's November 2011 issue describes Egypt as "A country at war with itself" - an unfortunate reminder to the people of Egypt of the long road to peace first, and democracy next.

What began as sectarian violence between the Coptic Christians and the Egyptian Police has escalated into wide spread violence against the Military establishment. While the country, for the first time in decades, was buoyant about an electoral process, the ensuing violence has made Cairo's Tahrir Square a boiling pot with continued clashes. The rowdy behavior of the Egyptian military against the very same people it helped liberate from the Mubarak regime is a reflection of  the Infection of Power.

While the population erupts to surge towards a democratic government, an ugly face of democracy and elections that Egyptians are hitherto not exposed to is manifesting with the growth of political parties such as the Al-Nour party. The Al-Nour party is one of the resultant fragments of the political revolution of 2011 and is a strong proponent of the Salafi Islamist ideology. Should the party come to power either independently or through a coalition, the implementation of the Sharia law, or an equally non-secular Islamist law, is a reality that threatens to destroy Egypt's secular fabric.

It is amazingly unfortunate that an amateur, in-active blogger can continue to harp on this story 10 months after first writing about it. The pessimism expressed amidst the euphoria of Mubarak's ouster has sadly come true with the road to a peaceful, democratic, and then a secular Egypt, seeming almost an unrealistic fantasy.